Olivier Krug, flanked by his father, Henri (right), and uncle, Rémi, also collaborated with his grandfather (not pictured) to produce the 1995 Vintage, a wine the author awarded 99 points for its “tenacious” nose that “exudes spicebox” and its “voluptuous” palate.
Grabbing le Bâton -A new generation of Champenoisis ready to handle the good and the too goodBy Lyn FarmerChampagne is at the height of its popularity. A cursory look at statistics paints a rosy picture - sales are up, prices are up, even production is up. Yet Yves Bénard is worried. As a lover of Champagne, I don't like it when Monsieur Bénard is worried. He is the former head of Moët & Chandon and is currently the president of the Union des Maisons de Champagne, the association of Champagne négociants - the major producers of the world's favorite sparkling wine. When he talks, the fizz biz listens. With a concerned look, Bénard refers to Champagne's crise de prospérité, or "crisis of prosperity," and warns his colleagues - and the marketplace - that Champagne's success could very well be the cause of its eventual undoing, though tangible evidence of the same might be years - or even decades - away.
To most consumers, it is inconceivable that Champagne's bubble could one day burst. New brands show up on shelves all the time as small producers strive to enter the lucrative American, British and Asian markets. New cuvées have even entered the portfolios of established brands. Prices certainly aren't coming down, but they aren't outpacing inflation either. Adding to consumer and industry optimism, a new generation has been fastidiously groomed to seamlessly step into some very big shoes at a number of the most significant houses. So how can this unbridled success give Bénard cause for worry?
As a tightly contained region, Champagne is under as much pressure as a magnum of vintage bubbly. Because of its finite geography, there is a limit to how much Champagne - at least Champagne as we know it - can be made. Companies that plan on growth without acknowledging the limits of production create a blueprint for failure; or worse than failure in the minds of many Champenois, one for lowered quality. The fact is, there is no more land available for vineyards. The old guard may have grown up thinking there was still a good deal of potential vineyard land available, but the new blood that will now steer Champagne's 21st-century course has grown up in an atmosphere of plenty - not just financial success, but a countryside crammed with vines.
"We say everything in Champagne has been planted except for schoolyards and churchyards, which is probably true," notes Panos Sarantopoulos, the recently appointed 39-year-old managing director of Champagne Krug.
Bénard's point is that because of vineyard limitations, Champagne's growth cannot be sustained. Therefore, a key tenet of any business - that growth is good, if not essential - does not necessarily apply in France's northernmost wine region.
Yves Dumont, the chairman of Laurent-Perrier, puts things into perspective: "We are not in a business where you produce what you can sell; we can only sell what we can produce," notes Dumont, who has improved L-P's prospects considerably since he joined the family-owned company in 1997. "The first thing you need is patience. You should never go too quickly in a business where you have three and a half years of stock - whatever you do, it will have no impact for five years," he continues. Despite his cautions, Dumont is not truly pessimistic, nor are most of his colleagues, many of whom have only recently taken their place as director or chief winemaker of their respective houses.
Daniel Lorson of the CIVC, the quasi-governmental body that helps regulate both grape growers and the houses (in Champagne the two are not only usually different, but frequently at odds), stands on a hill near Épernay and looks out over the rolling vineyards of Champagne and outlines the challenge succinctly: "We work hard to help people understand that Champagne, the wine, comes only from Champagne, the region, and that region has very specific boundaries. There is a maximum amount of land area that can be planted with vines, and there is a legal limit on yield. In other words, there is a limit to how much wine we can produce and still call it Champagne."
The loosely termed "next generation" (the new movers and shakers are not all of the same age; nor are they all heads of houses - some are winemakers - and some have actually been at their stations for a handful of years already) has varying takes on the issues that will shape Champagne's future.
For example, Benoît Gouez, the affable chef de caves at the region's largest producer, Moët & Chandon, understands the constraints facing Champagne, but the recently named cellar master says finding a way to increase capacity by any one producer is not one and the same problem. Moët is both the largest owner of vineyards and the region's biggest purchaser of grapes. "Moët & Chandon represents perhaps ten percent of the Champagne produced, and certainly that is a large number in a region with hundreds of producers. But if we buy close to ten percent of the grapes on the market in Champagne, that still means we don't buy 90 percent so there is actually plenty of room for us to grow."
That growth, however, cannot only mean making more wine. "There is a big margin of development not only in quantity," he says, "but also in value. Our interest is to grow our value." Growing value is a phrase that comes up in nearly every conversation one has with Champagne producers. It's a tricky concept to define because it means different things to different people. Consumers may think of increased value as getting more wine for their money; to most Champenois, it means getting more money for their wine. As Krug's Sarantopoulos poses, "The impact for us is, can we grow value with limited volume?"
Here we have a similar question put forth by producers on opposite ends of the commercial spectrum. Moët's White Star is the bestselling Champagne in the United States and costs about $35 per bottle (it is often on sale for less). Krug's portfolio begins at about $145 per bottle and soars to more than $700 for the rare single vineyard Clos du Mesnil, which can sell for more than list price because of its scarcity.
"Value" is clearly a quality most of the major houses want to increase. Michel Lettre has been the director of both Perrier Jouët and Mumm since January 2006. He is a career manager with Pernod-Ricard with extensive experience in Asia, where he handled distribution of Pol Roger and Louis Roederer, so he is no stranger to high-end Champagne. Rather than make more wine to address the growth issue, he wants to see his company focus on fewer markets, concentrating on the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Asia, and told the British magazine Harper's that, "Everyone in Champagne should be pursuing value, not volume, policies. If we start to play with the quality and ageing, all will suffer." He also asserts that his company "is here to promote quality products at the highest price level...if there are not enough stocks, we won't reduce the ageing time our wines are given in the cellar, we will go on allocation." That may make his sales staff edgy, yet it can't help but warm the hearts of consumers who have appreciated Mumm's noticeable increase in quality over the past few years.
Jacques Péters, the longtime cellar master at Veuve Clicquot, says, "Value is related to grapes. It all begins in the vineyard; you need quality grapes to make quality wine. And all the quality producers put a huge amount of effort into finding good grapes - it's a very competitive process." So far, sufficient grapes have been available and production in Champagne has grown two percent per year for the last three years, but the plantable land area remains fixed, so something will soon have to give.
Champagne is unusual among the world's best wine regions in that producers generally don't own a great deal of the vineyards that supply them with fruit. There are exceptions, especially among the smaller producers who are also growers, the récoltant-manipulants. But most of the major houses purchase a substantial portion of their grapes from a network of more than 15,000 growers, some of them large, but most small owners of plots measured in single-digit hectares.
The concern for many is that what will end up "giving" are the legal limits on grape yields. Yield limits are part politics and part science, with the goal of preventing production of more grapes than can be grown at an acceptable level of quality. While little of it is exported to the United States, there is a good deal of mediocre Champagne produced and available in many other markets.
To one camp, this thin and acidic wine, dilute in flavor and aroma, is the harbinger of what lies ahead if regulations are relaxed. And it could happen. Many growers are lobbying to increase the permitted yields as a way of meeting increasing demands for more grapes. Moët & Chandon CEO Frédéric Cuménal told journalists earlier this year that "Our number-one priority in Champagne should be to eliminate the 60 to 90 million bottles [out of about 300 million produced annually] that don't do justice to the category and put its reputation at risk." If this were accomplished, he says, that would provide room for the steady growth of quality brands for a decade and ease the pressure to grow even more grapes.
"We don't necessarily need more grapes," Olivier Krug says, in still another variation on the growth theme. This sixth-generation family member was recently named a director of the house and head of the tasting committee. In other words, he is the 21st-century guarantor of Krug's quality and style. "What we need are great grapes," he emphasizes. "Perhaps the most crucial aspect of keeping our quality high is managing the company's relationship with our growers." Like many houses, Krug puts considerable effort into cultivating its network of around 50 growers "representing a mosaic of a few hundred parcels, some not bigger than a private garden," the chief taster notes.
And just as there is a new generation of producers entering Champagne's cellars, there is a new flock of growers entering the vineyards. What is exciting about this group, Krug observes, is that, "This new generation of growers, often younger growers, are more comfortable with new approaches." Whereas the established model of the négociant-grower relationship is for a house to sign a contract with a grower for all his production, "Krug is signing some contracts for single vineyards, and even individual parcels within the vineyards. In a sense, quality is a mindset, an approach, and this is one area where we are improving quality all the time," he says.
At age 40, Krug is a highly visible representative of his Champagne generation, as is Moët & Chandon's 35-year-old Gouez. Clicquot - which, like Krug and Moët, is owned by the giant luxury goods firm LVMH - recently announced that in 2008, after a two-year transition period, Jacques Péters, who has been its cellar master for 28 years, will turn over his duties to 39-year-old Dominique Demarville. Demarville was formerly cellar master at G.H. Mumm, where he was the youngest modern-day chef de caves at any of the major houses. He was, in turn, recently succeeded by his assistant at Mumm, 35-year-old Didier Mariotti.
The rise of a new Champagne generation is by no means limited to the corporate firms; it is even more noticeable at the few major houses that remain in family hands. Frédéric Rouzaud has taken over from his father as managing director of Louis Roederer; and Etienne Bizot, a direct descendant of the founders of Champagne Bollinger, represents the sixth generation of his family in the management of that fabled house.
After Taittinger's 38 heirs could not agree on a plan to retain the firm in the face of mounting taxes, the house and other businesses the heirs' holding company controlled were sold in 2005 to the Starwood Capital Group, an equity fund, for $3.5 billion. Starwood was eager to obtain a number of the holding company's businesses, including a luxury hotel group and Baccarat Crystal, but indicated it was interested in selling the Champagne arm, including Taittinger's extensive vineyard holdings. The French public was in an uproar over whether the venerable house would stay in French hands - then breathed a collective sigh of relief. This past summer, Taittinger and its vineyards were repurchased by a group of investors that includes France's largest bank, Crédit Agricole, and members of the Taittinger family.
With the repurchase, 53-year-old Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger is firmly in charge of the house's day-to-day operations as its director general. "We had a good relationship with Starwood. They left our management in charge, and they were very helpful in making this sale," Taittinger notes. Many Champenois consider Crédit Agricole to be a local bank because it is active in the wine industry, and its participation in the repurchase was widely viewed as a patriotic act. "With the friendship of Crédit Agricole, our ownership is absolutely secure and stable. I take this very seriously because it's my name on the bottle, and I consider [my family's] name to be a guarantee of quality," Taittinger observes.
Not coincidentally, security and stability resonate in Taittinger's take on the complexities of Champagne's future. "Relations between the great houses and the growers are generally good," he notes. "Global demand is excellent and we have new emerging markets in Asia and elsewhere, and good people coming into the business. If we guard quality, the wine will [remain] good. We will still be short of Champagne because the demand remains high, but we will not do anything to [adversely] affect the quality - it is our most important mission."
Pol Roger, another house steeped in tradition and history, remains family-driven, too, albeit with an outsider bridging the generations. "We believe very much in family," notes managing director Patrice Noyelle. "I am not a member of the two related families that own the company - the de Billy family and the Pol-Roger family - but I am here because we want this company to remain a family firm."
The middle-aged Noyelle explains that after marrying into the Mommessin family and working in management at the Burgundian négociant for many years, he was recruited by the house of Pol Roger with a very specific mission: "I came in because there was a hole in the generations where one generation is older and another is too young - not enough bottle age! I joined in as a transition between two generations. I am the first one to manage the house who is not family, but I think like the family."
When Noyelle joined Pol Roger in 1997, one of the first things he needed to address was the house image. The wines were better than ever, he says, but the company still needed a fresh eye. "I very quickly saw it, so I was the one who had to say we needed to redesign the packaging of Pol Roger. I didn't think we were [standing out] in the marketplace well; I thought it appeared that we were a little old fashioned." In the corporate world, the change might have been easy, but in a family firm it took both persuasion and determination, yet Noyelle succeeded in implementing a new label design and contemporary packaging that raised the image of Pol Roger in the consumer market.
"It is important to bring in new blood in response to the changing market," he says. "Whether it will affect how we find new customers is not always obvious because the house style is deeply in our roots and we [believe] it must be transmitted from generation to generation. For example, at Pol Roger, the family gets together to blend the cuvée - the older generation is together with the younger generation to maintain the style, and it is, in a way, a tradition we want to speak to always in order to maintain our soul. The new generation will bring techniques and other new things, but, in fact, we are regenerating a style and a tradition we are very proud of."
The link between generations is crucial, agrees Olivier Krug. "Even if my role as director of the tasting committee became official this year, I had been working with my father, Henri, for 17 years, and he had worked with his father before that." The perfect example, he says, is the just-released 1995 Vintage Krug. "Three generations collaborated on this wine: My grandfather was alive for the harvest and fermentation, my father was the winemaker, and I worked for the company then, as well, so the wine was blended by three generations of Krugs. It was a great experience to have us all work together."
Winemaker Anselme Selosse, a small but influential producer in Champagne's Côte des Blancs area, asks if too much is made of the family connection. "After all, it's rare that a chef would pass on a restaurant to his children, so why a vineyard or a winery?" He asks this despite having taken over the winery from his father, Jacques, whose name remains on the label. "I don't know if my children will be all that interested in continuing," he says. And even if they do, what will they continue with? "Yes, the big houses can continue, but small houses, I'm not sure what will happen to all of us. The big advantage we have is the vines. A family house mainly works with the vines and the terroir, but in a market-oriented world, the big houses have to focus on the wines, on the finished product."
The small, but excellent house of Gaston Chiquet is owned and guided by Nicolas Chiquet (who is also the winemaker) and his two brothers. "At a small house, one might sell 20,000 bottles of wine each year," he explains. "Only about 20 houses actually sell more than one million bottles a year." Both Selosse and Chiquet value the control they have over their grape supplies, another way that a producer, particularly a récoltant-manipulant, can gain some assurance about the future. "It's not impossible to run a large house, but more and more the big houses are run by financial managers who don't know the wine and don't really have passion for wine," Chiquet says.
Bollinger's Etienne Bizot disagrees. His family has been in the Champagne business for more than 150 years and makes about two million bottles of Champagne each year. "There are many small producers that do have a direct connection to the land. They may have owned the vineyards for many years, but often they are relatively new in the business of actually making Champagne, while we have been doing it for several generations. We are working on a different scale, but as vineyard owners ourselves, we still have a connection to the land." It is clear from Bollinger's wine that there is no lack of passion in the process.
This issue isn't really about size, but intent. While a convincing case can be made that top quality is harder to guarantee in huge quantity, what seems to make the greatest difference is commitment and attention to detail, combined with a degree of technical expertise. Clearly there are business issues concerning how and where grapes are purchased, and how standards are maintained, but there are ethical questions as well. While it is true that French law decrees maximum yields, the concept can be deceptive because the limits are only on how much yield can be used for Champagne and does not actually restrict how many grapes are grown in a vineyard. Nor does the law dictate the quality of the grapes.
"It's interesting that with some of the younger growers, they are drawn to us because we are both traditional and we are new," Olivier Krug says. "Because we ferment our wine in barrel, the lots are very small."
"We have these oak casks for 100 percent of production not by accident, but by choice," says Krug's colleague Panos Sarantopoulos. "Not because time passed us by and we missed stainless steel, but because somewhere in time there was a conscious choice to do it this way."
Now this traditional Krug approach strikes a responsive chord for a new generation in Champagne. "For some of these young growers, that is an advantage because this lets us actually focus on very small lots and give a great deal of individual attention to our wine," Krug says. "That is something they respond to." Even at a large house like Mumm, a similar idea is taking hold. One of Didier Mariotti's first projects at the house was to develop a tracking system that allows grapes from specific vineyard parcels within individual crus to be fermented separately within the Mumm winery.
This contemporary interest in working with small lots of grapes and wine is an ironic twist. Over the last few centuries, Champagne's very identity has been tied to its image as a blended wine - an amalgam of three grape varieties sourced from many vineyards in the three major areas of the region. The original idea was that multiple grape sources spread the risk of frost and other natural obstacles in France's northernmost winegrowing region. Today, however, this diversity is just as often highlighted rather than blended away (see "Beyond the Blend," page 42).
It may very well be that Champagne's future is brightest with this melding of tradition and innovation. Nicolas Jaeger, 32, is the winemaker at Alfred Gratien, the fourth generation of his family to work at the Champagne house. He has a science-based winemaking education tempered by the experience of working with his father and grandfather. "We use a very old process here that many wineries have given up: racking or moving wine from one barrel to another in the open air with what we call a basin or big bowl. To many wineries, this traditional method exposes the wine to too much oxygen, but we think a little oxidation now helps the wine age better in the bottle." He explains that it's like a vaccination, preventing further oxidation in the future.
Moët's Gouez says that being mindful of tradition is actually a hallmark of younger winemakers, who do it very selectively. "There are good traditions, but if people tell me they do something because 'we've always done it like that,' then I challenge it; that means you've lost the meaning, you don't know the reason you do things, so how can you know [if] it is relevant? But if you know why you do it, your wine will be better."
Another quality Champagne's younger winemakers and managers share is sophistication. Krug's Sarantopoulos says, "There's a fantastic new generation of people coming into this business at many levels - a new generation of farmers who are willing to go even deeper and higher in what they do in terms of quality and the approach they bring. They are increasingly educated, they have traveled and are more open to the world, and we see people moving with the times."
"We don't speak French here anymore," Olivier Krug jokes. "Our team is so international - in addition to Panos, who is Greek, we have a Dutch member, a Canadian, two Brits and three or four other nationalities. This isn't unique to us, it's happening throughout Champagne."
"The common point among many of us is not that we are better trained than our predecessors - they were well trained, too - but most of us have experience outside of Champagne," Gouez observes. "Fewer and fewer of us come from Champagne or only have experience here. I'm from Brittany, studied in the South of France, and worked in California, Australia and New Zealand, and others are the same. We work in other areas, then are hired in Champagne because of our broader or more international experience."
How the exact balance between broad experience and a deeply ingrained-in-the-soul understanding of a region's terroir is achieved varies, but Béatrice Cointreau, the managing director of Champagne Gosset, embodies the ideal. She is not from Champagne, nor is she a winemaker, though she is widely considered to be one of the best tasters in the region. After earning a law degree in France and an MBA at Cornell - where she also picked up a notable fluency in American English - she moved into management at Frapin, an esteemed Cognac house owned by her family. She became managing director there in 1992, and while admired for her business acumen, it was her extraordinary palate that attracted considerable attention in Cognac.
In 1993, her family purchased Champagne Gosset, the oldest wine-related business in Champagne, but after 20 generations of family control it was desperately in need of new capital and new blood. Cointreau was named CEO of the Champagne firm, adding to her responsibilities in Cognac, and quickly became one of the most respected female executives in the region.
Under her guidance, Gosset has emerged from something approaching obscurity to a highly regarded position in the market. In the process, Cointreau has become part of a continuum of women who have revolutionized Champagne - from the widows Clicquot and Roederer in the 18th century to Lili Bollinger and Caroline Duval-Leroy in the 20th.
"Champagne still offers a special expertise," Krug offers. "You may find technicians in many areas - and broad experience with winemaking helps and great business sense from other businesses - but to make Champagne, you still need people from the region who know the vineyards, the culture here; it's still important to know in your soul how various plots and exposures differ. Making Champagne is more than technology."
That may well be, but because of the technological processes required to produce Champagne - from two fermentations to incorporate the bubbles into the wine to the production of heavier and costlier bottles to hold the wine at its high pressure - Champagne costs more than most wines to make, and thus even at the entry level, is comparatively expensive in the marketplace. To justify the higher cost, Champagne is often marketed as a luxury product, even as its producers assert it is a great wine for everyone and every occasion. It's a ticklish balance, to which Olivier Krug's uncle Rémi offers one of his favorite bon mots: "It's not Champagne, it's Krug."
"The Krug family has a collective memory that they bring forward [with every generation]," Sarantopoulos says. It is intangible in some ways, but absolutely crucial to the image of the house. "Krug is famous for having a very individualistic vision of what Champagne is, what the wine is, what the flavors are," he says. This uniqueness is one aspect of luxury and part of the appeal the small house holds for its giant parent company. According to Sarantopoulos, luxury brands often combine what he calls modernity: the hip and trendy image that can come from a large company with a family name that serves as a representation of craftsmanship.
"This is not the case at Krug," Sarantopoulos observes. "The family is not a façade; the family is deeply involved. And the modernity is not simply or only injected from the outside; it comes from the inside because Krug has always had an inventiveness and uniqueness. It is a unique savoir-faire that, on top of everything else, has a name and a face."
Modernity and that central yearning to be perceived as exclusive - yet still available in the mass market - has led most houses to create several tiers of Champagne, from an entry-level non-vintage to a pricey and more rare luxury cuvée. Like many high-end products, the luxury cuvées, in particular, have become enmeshed with popular culture in ways that are sometimes unpredictable. Dom Pérignon is probably the best-known luxury or prestige cuvée, followed closely by Louis Roederer's Cristal (as recognizable in its sleek, crystal-clear bottle as is DP in its more squat, curvaceous, traditional package).
Dom Pérignon has been a luxury icon for decades, while Cristal's rise in pop culture has been slower and, until recently, more subtle. Made in smaller quantities than Dom Pérignon (which seems to never run out of stock in wine shops and restaurants) Cristal's scarcity made it less readily attainable.
Cristal reached an entirely new level of visibility, however, when it started being invoked in hip-hop lyrics, particularly those by the recording star and music executive Jay-Z, who apparently wanted to show off pricey and unobtainable items in his music and videos. According to Agenda Inc., a brand strategy agency that tracks mentions in Billboard's top 20 songs, Cristal ranked No. 8 in 2005, bubbling up just behind the likes of Mercedes, Nike, Bentley and Rolls Royce.
The subsequent Jay-Z contretemps, much reported and commented on in the traditional and not-so-traditional media, points to just one more variable that the most-recent Champagne leaders must consider when plotting the future of their houses. Though it's widely agreed that Frédéric Rouzaud, the newly appointed managing director of Louis Roederer, was misquoted and misunderstood, the incident may have been a headache for the house, but it increased the visibility of Champagne in popular culture.
With younger directors taking the helm at so many houses, the challenge of adapting to the popular marketplace (including its sometimes seemingly arbitrary whims), while maintaining quality, increasing value and reading the preferences of a new generation of consumers may not prove so daunting.
A significant trend that has young and old smiling in Épernay and Reims (although everyone is also wondering how long it will last), is the striking growth of the international market for rosé Champagne. Sales are driven partly by the popularity of rosé in nightclubs and the entertainment business, but also by the houses themselves, which are looking for ways to increase value and see rosé as a way to charge a premium price for non-vintage wine.
"We made our last non-vintage rosé in 1809," Clicquot's Jacques Péters says. "In 1810, Madame Clicquot made a vintage wine, and that became our rosé wine for all the years after. But I thought there would be a great place for a non-vintage rosé and I started working on it in the late 1990s." The resultant wine was produced in a very small quantity for release in 2004 and was sold only in a few markets. With Clicquot's flair for marketing, the cuvée is described as "the rosé expression of Yellow Label," the firm's bestselling - and one of the world's best-known - non-vintage Champagne.
"In fact," Péters continues, "it poses some challenges because we have to source very high-quality pinot noir for the red wine that gives the Yellow Label blend its rosé color - the base wine is exactly the same as Yellow Label. It was difficult to line up the necessary pinot, but it has been worth it. In all my 28 years with the company, our vintage rosé has always sold the same number of bottles. Now we are ready for something different."
Introduced with considerable fanfare in March, the wine has been wildly successful, at least according to press notices, and reflects a growing discovery by Champagne companies: Rosé is slightly costlier to produce than a blanc non-vintage, but consumers are, so far at least, willing to pay an outsize premium for it.
Laurent-Perrier's vice-president for U.S. operations, François Peltereau-Villeneuve, says, "We released our NV Cuvée Rosé Brut back in 1968, and were the first house to really promote this particular style of Champagne since World War II. Now, most - if not all - of the houses are on the rosé bandwagon." Laurent-Perrier is by far the market leader for rosé, though rising grape prices and increased costs of financing the long ageing periods Champagne requires have pushed the price up by 100 percent in the last decade (from $35 in 1996 to $70 currently). And yet, demand continues to outstrip supply. "It's amazing," Peltereau-Villeneuve says, "the rosé category went from four percent to six percent of the Champagne market last year, and our sales were up by percentages in the double digits."
"People love rosé," Clicquot's Péters observes. "We have seen popularity of rosé rise and fall several times over the years, but maybe this is its time." Indeed, Clicquot believes the time, the wine and the current generation of consumers are a perfect blend. So much so, that Clicquot recently opened a rosé-only production facility. Cellar master-designate Dominique Demarville also seems like a perfect fit for Clicquot's plans for rosé. "In blending, we always try to maximize what the terroir offers, and in rosé that purity of red fruit is crucial," he says. "Color is a big concern in rosé - we want a consistency of color which is not so important an element in vintage wines." The Clicquot rosé, with its shimmering mother of pearl hue that Demarville calls "nacre," has been positioned as a wine for the future.
"This is a great time to make Champagne," Moët's Gouez enthuses. There are always problems to be dealt with - maintaining quality amid tightening grape supplies is a major concern - but he believes the tools are there to keep quality high. "Champagne is inconsistent by nature. We have weather problems most winegrowing regions don't face, and losing grapes to hail and frost and uneven ripening have been consistent problems and have always been an issue. But we know so much more today about how to care for vines and how to make the wine that we no longer worry about accidents or pray for happy coincidences."
"We are still concerned about the weather in Champagne," says Clicquot's Demarville, who notes that many of his colleagues are particularly aware of what global warming may bring to the equation, because they see a trend toward earlier harvests and fewer spring frosts. Shortly before he left Mumm for Clicquot, he observed that, "A slightly warmer climate helps to obtain a more consistent and larger crop, but there is also the evolution of winegrowing," which he thinks may permit the next generation to increase quantities to some extent without impacting quality. Still, he cautions, "a limit exists."
At Krug, Sarantopoulos notes, "Look how much technology has changed over the 163 years since the house was founded, but the wine and the vision remain. There is truth to certain values, and whatever generation we are from, we try to preserve those values."
Gouez agrees, noting that Champagne's new leaders have ample ammunition in their arsenal.
"I think that it is important to maintain consistency. But does that mean White Star is the same now as 50 years ago? No. I am convinced the values and philosophy are the same, but the wine is improved. What we bring is not a revolution, it is an evolution."
Clearly, these dynamic and visionary young leaders who are now emerging are well on their way to "saving" Champagne from its own success. It's a mission that many of their global peers - faced with wine gluts, multiplying brands and deep case discounting - can only wish they shared.
Senior Editor Lyn Farmer received the 2003 James Beard Journalism Award for magazine writing and was also nominated in 2004.
Tasting BAR
While he was still working as a winemaker with his father, Henri, I once asked Olivier Krug if there were plans to respond to market demand and heavy allocation by increasing production. He laughed and said he could consider it, but even if he found more vineyards that very day to add to his supply, with cultivation and ageing it would still take 15 years for the increase to show up in sales. Krug, with its long-term regimen, is an extreme example, but by its very nature Champagne is slow to respond to direction from anyone other than Mother Nature, so any changes initiated by a new managing director, owner or cellar master take years to influence the wine. Yet the changes wrought by today's new vignerons will last for decades - in the vineyard and in the bottle.
Bollinger, 1997 Grande Année - $120: There is something very apt in Bollinger's association with James Bond films. Bollinger is polarizing with its full-throttle style and, if ever there were a vinous version of the clichéd "iron fist in a velvet glove" this would be it, albeit a very long and impeccably tailored velvet glove. The continuity of the Bollinger style is unmistakable; I've had wines made by three generations of the family and the staying power they exhibit - power without loss of elegance - is extraordinary. Although 1997 was not a popular vintage with some of the houses, Bollinger did a bang-up job with it. Pale gold in color, the wine has fine bubbles and a creamy texture. Lively, intense aromas of citrus peel, baked bread, white flowers and some gingery spice create a pageant on the nose that is repeated on the palate. A hint of orange crops up with great finesse and roundness of flavor in the long finish. Score: 96
Gosset, 1999 Grande Millésime - $85: In the last years of its ownership by the Gosset family, quality had slipped, so that by the time Béatrice Cointreau's family purchased the property there was room for improvement on both the technical and commercial sides. I'm not sure I could have forecast just how rapidly the wine would improve, though. Under Cointreau's leadership, the cellars were upgraded and standards raised; once the wine began showing its pedigree, it was introduced to a wider market that included the United States. The 1999 is a great testament to what a few years of care, followed by a few years of patience, can accomplish. Though aged six years, there's still a flash of youthful green in the color, but there is nothing unripe about this full-bodied wine. The nose imparts aromas of yellow fruit, like pear and apricot, and a bit of delicate white flowers. Quite youthful on the palate, the wine has a racy citrus quality to counter the lovely, round texture that closes with a persistent and slightly honeyed finish. An altogether lovely wine (and in a beautiful package, too). Score: 92
Krug, 1995 Brut Vintage - $200: This is the first vintage Krug released since the 1990, so the anticipation for it has been great, partly to see what magic Krug worked on a very good vintage in Champagne and partly to see what could possibly follow the ethereal 1990. There is a special sentimental value attached to this particular cuvée for Krug lovers, as well, because it represents the last vintage wine produced by three generations of the Krug family. There was an uproar when it was announced in 1999 that LVMH would purchase Krug, but many forget that Krug has not been family owned for 30 years, a period that has seen some of the greatest wines ever from the house. This is a great testimony to the strength of the Krug vision and the impact of the Krug style, which is often considered robust and powerful. That makes the 1995 Vintage Krug all the more exciting to sample because it so clearly shows the influence of the vintage itself, and is not just a vehicle for an imposed style. In appearance, it is pale gold with very fine bubbles. The nose is tenacious, but a little lighter than the classic Krug style (a quality I find entrancing). The bouquet exudes spicebox aromas of ginger, citrus peel and a bit of honey, but also carries a trace of bright minerality. A mineral aspect is even more evident on the palate, but so is the voluptuous quality of the fruit with added notes of brioche and honey - real hallmarks of the '95 vintage. The experience continues with an achingly long finish. Score: 99
Moët & Chandon, 1999 Vintage - $53: Moët is such a powerful force in Champagne that it's fashionable in some quarters to pretend it's just a big lug that lacks finesse. I doubt that this was ever true, but the wines do seem to be more finely balanced and focused over the past few years. While White Star, a wildly popular extra-dry, offers little to the serious Champagne fan other than a good quaff, to really appreciate what Benoît Gouez and his team have accomplished, look to the 1999 Vintage bottling. Bright white-gold with a powerful stream of medium-sized bubbles. In the nose, there are abundant yellow stone fruit aromas with an appealing yeasty bread dough note and just enough mineral quality to keep it racy. On the palate, its roundness is the first indicator that, unlike many houses, Moët embraces the inclusion of pinot meunier in the blend; in fact, the three Champagne grapes are in nearly equal proportions, giving the wine a spicy edge and power without sacrificing finesse. It's a lovely, medium-weight and easy-to-drink - either as an apéritif or with food - Champagne. Score: 90
Pol Roger, 1999 Brut Rosé - $89: In addition to streamlining its packaging to better fit in the contemporary marketplace, a major initiative undertaken at Pol Roger by managing director Patrice Noyelle was the modernization of its cellars in Épernay. Pol Roger has some of the deepest and coldest caves in Champagne and the house believes the low temperature, colder than most others by several degrees, coupled with long ageing, gives its wines smaller bubbles and a creamier texture. Part of the cellar modernization was the addition of more stainless steel tanks for aging the vin claire, or still wines, prior to blending. I already detect the results in Pol Roger's exceptional Vintage Rosé; keeping the wines in stainless steel preserves a vibrant fruitiness, and then seven years' ageing in the cold cellars develops an exceptional texture that results in one of Champagne's consistently great rosés. The 1999 has an intense, vibrant rose gold color. A lovely red fruit quality is clearly evident on the nose - a touch of fraise de bois or wild strawberry and hints of raspberry along with bright red apple. In the mouth, the red berries recede a bit and give way to the red apple and a hint of yellow stone fruit. I love the exceptional balance of this wine; it's very clean and elegant on the palate and lingers on a long finish. Score: 95
Taittinger, 2000 Comtes de Champagne Rosé Brut Vintage - $210: Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger continues the family's style, which he describes as "elegant and light, but not without substance." The house identity is firmly rooted in chardonnay, so it is no accident the white prestige cuvée, Comtes de Champagne, is a blanc de blancs. Its rosé partner is not, however, simply the blanc de blancs made pink. It is a wholly different and absolutely stunning wine that is usually about 70 percent pinot noir. To preserve its freshness and sublime character, the Comtes de Champagne Rosé is generally aged only four or five years before disgorging (as opposed to the seven or more years given the blanc de blancs and most other prestige cuvées). The 2000 displays an alluring salmon pink color with extremely fine bubbles. Like its predecessors, it exudes a striking balance of freshness and earthiness on the nose that carry nuances of red berries (especially wild strawberry), tempered by a thread of minerality. On the palate, one is first struck by an appealing freshness, the crisp acidity perfectly balanced with red fruit, then lovely elements of red apple and fresh brioche insinuate themselves and continue to resonate on an exceptionally long finish. Elegant, vibrant and most memorable. Score: 95
Veuve Clicquot, NV Rosé - $50: Cellar master Jacques Péters retires in two years and, despite all the successes over his 28 years at the house, this wine may be his greatest legacy to Champagne lovers. He and designated-successor Dominique Demarville are fans of rosé, though neither were ever identified as rosé specialists. With this project seen through to fruition, however, each has certainly gained a depth of expertise in the category. The wine is luminous in color - the most gorgeous and nearly iridescent pink I can recall seeing in a rosé. Péters calls this "the rosé expression of Yellow Label," and says the base wine is his regular non-vintage blend that he finesses by adding a red wine made with both pinot noir and pinot meunier. The finished product is altogether more elegant and arresting than Yellow Label. The wine exudes red fruit aromas, especially hints of raspberry and red currant; it's crisp in the mouth, but the red fruit qualities lighten rather than weigh down the wine. At long last, a rosé that really tastes like a combination of red and white wine! Score: 92 - LF
